Sunday, November 18, 2012

Africa and Obama’s second term

How the newly re-elected US president is not the solution but the problem for Africa

Last week,
Barak Obama was re-elected president of the United States. Since his
first election in 2008, many African elites were happy that at least
“one of us” has won the presidency of the world’s only, albeit
declining, superpower. Behind this “one of us” label lies hope that
Obama, being “black”, would do more to “help” Africa fix its problems
like dictatorship, poverty, corruption and bad government. And it seems
from his rhetoric during his first election campaigns that he would try
to “fix” Africa. Nothing is scarier about Obama than this ambition.

No Western leader would enjoy as much legitimacy as Obama if he
attempted to “solve” Africa’s problems. Obama’s actions would enjoy
widespread support in Africa and the Western world for two main reasons.
First, his African ancestry gives him “racial legitimacy” – both in
Africa and the Western world – to act since he is seen as “one of us” or
“their own” depending on which side of the Atlantic you sit. Second,
his little experience with his Kenyan family combined with his personal
hubris has given Obama confidence that he understands Africa and its
ills better than his predecessors.

Indeed,
Western attempt to solve Africa’s problems, however well intentioned in
their aims and however grandiose in their idealism, are part of the
problem not the solution for our continent. This is because any Western
leader would come with a set of assumptions and prejudices about the
source of our failures – corruption, bad leadership and lack of
democracy. When I was young and intelligent, I treated these assumptions
as manifest truth. Now that I have grown old and stupid, I see them as
symptoms of a more complex structural problem.

Here is my
first point: It is unlikely that Obama will sit around a table with a
group of African politicians, businesspersons, civil society activists
and civil servants to craft a solution for Africa. Even if this were
done, it would only be ceremonial. Therefore, the blueprint to fix our
continent would be designed in Washington by people who know a lot
theoretically about Africa but have little or no experience with actual
practical complexities of its politics. To attempt a large-scale plan
from such a position is the stuff that most delusions are born of.

Secondly,
many people from the West come with a set of assumptions about
institutions and policies that have worked well in the West and think
these can be replicated in Africa to produce similar results. This view
is supported by a large number of African intellectuals and lies at the
heart of our continent’s problems. We ignore the fact that these
policies and institutions that have served the West so well were born of
a specific context. It involved changing technology, which fostered
structural change giving birth to political contests by emergent social
groups. The resultant political contests took place in a specific set of
values, norms and traditions and these produced a set of institutions
and policies to respond to those realities.

Subtract
all these processes and pick the end result, the institutions, and then
copy and paste them unto a continent with a different social structure,
history, skills, culture, norms – name it – and think it can work. That
is one of the major delusions of all large-scale domestic or
foreign-engineered change. I add “domestic” projects because I am
acutely aware of some large-scale projects of national transformation
like Ujaama that were locally bred and turned out to be a disaster. So
the fact that something is locally generated does not automatically make
it desirable.

For many
years, the West, with the support of African intellectuals has attempted
various projects of modernising Africa by replicating Western values,
norms and institutions often with disastrous results. But the advocates
of this “modernisation” project never give up. The 1980s and 90s
Structural Adjustment Programs were one such experiment. These
experiments lacked legitimacy because their promoters were largely
white. Therefore, fear of being accused of racism tended to moderate
their actions.

However,
Obama is not restrained by such accusations. Being “black” and of
African origins, he enjoys near-unanimous support on our continent.
Local elites, frustrated at their inability to influence their destiny,
have been waiting for a messiah from the West, especially America, to do
for them by diktat what they need to do through political struggle i.e.
dictate the pace and direction of change. Now these local intellectual
elites have someone with the necessary legitimacy, born almost entirely
of his assumed racial identity, to do this work.

Armed with
an ideology that believes in the use of government power to promote
social change, combined with his personal sense of destiny to change the
world, Obama is the kind of man to attempt a large-scale experiment of
social engineering in Africa. He loves to preach, to lecture and to
guide. His messianic image of himself as the solver of every problem
using government presents our nations a very big challenge. I admit that
a lot of Obama’s ambitions in Africa are shared by a large cross
section of our intellectuals. They would need a Gestapo to implement
them.

Here is my
point: our problems are largely (certainly not entirely) domestically
generated, as are the demands to solve them. Often the problem has been
that in trying to shape solutions to them, we rely too much on imported
theories. The mismatch between suggested solutions and actual realities
on the ground has been a major cause of failure on our continent.

Africa’s
problems are primarily political, born of a complex web or power
relationships from the village to the city. They cannot be solved by
foreign diktat. Only domestic political struggle can. Foreign assistance
is vital but can only succeed if it seeks to support local agents of
change. When foreign assistance comes with solutions like those Obama
outlined in his 2009 speech in Accra, then we are back on a slippery
slope. In such circumstances, the best Obama can do for Africa is to
fold his hands and do nothing. Africa’s savior may be the continuation
of the economic crisis in America, which may divert Obama’s next big
plan for our continent.

2 comments:

Dear Andrew, Great article. As others have also pointed out, Africa's biggest problems is lack of leadership. Its hard to always know what people's intentions are, but its safe to assume there are many external attempts to "solve our problems" that are well-meaning. Its up to the home-grown leadership to guide these well-meaning individuals/ organizations/ whatever form they come. Until we have the Andrew Mwendas of this continent rising to help guide the discussion, we are at the mercies of those who control the narrative of what Africa is perceived to be... and am not talking about the Western Media here.

Alright Andrew,I do not believe in a notion that someone's success should be provided by someone else. Much as I believe in team work, we have different aspirations. For one to believe that anyone, be it President Obama or someone else will solve this mess on the Continent, such a person is part of the problem. As you noted in your article, institutions and systems as well are born of a given environment and circumstances. And these are different across the globe. This belief in "copy and paste" has just complicated and worsened our predicament than solving it. The cure has been worse than the disease. I think this is the time for us to think on the ways we can independently tackle our issues. The Baganda say; "Nkoba zambogo, Zeggya zokka mu Bunnya"